Provident Partners news

“Twitter Means Business,” a new book written by Julio Ojeda-Zapata, technology columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, is now shipping — just in time for the holidays!

The Pioneer Press ran a preview of the new book over this past weekend. From that article:

“Twitter might seem like the last place on the Internet any self-respecting company would want to do business,” the author writes. “It can be a trivial and childish realm, filled with blather about bodily functions, pet excrement and what users had for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

“Yet…the companies come. The reason: Twitter is on fire. Its users are a remarkably vocal, energetic crowd. More and more businesses want this energy to rub off on them, and seek to generate some fireworks of their own as they discover their inner tweeters.”

We at Provident Partners have been eagerly awaiting this new book, as we were lucky enough to play a part in its creation. Albert Maruggi and Mike Keliher both appear in the book, as does one of our Twittering clients, Mark Palony of SoftBrands. Albert also wrote the book’s afterword, in which he explains how Twitter “taps human needs — the desire we have as part of a humanity to connect, to be curious, to seek recognition, to be part of something, and to share.”

For a deeper look (listen, actually) into the book, check out this podcast interview Albert did with Julio a few weeks ago. And of course, buy the book!

On this Election Day, MinnPost’s Christina Capecchi has a review of Meghan McCain’s “McCain Blogette,” the blog Meghan has been writing since 2007 to give readers a bit of an inside look at her father’s presidential campaign.

It’s difficult to judge the impact of one particular Web site in the mix of all other campaign-related communication, but with some help from Provident Partners’ Mike Keliher, Capecchi dissects the things Meghan’s site does well and not so well.

It’s difficult to pin down the Blogette’s political impact. Mike Keliher, 26, a social media consultant from St. Paul, assumes it’s minimal.

“There is probably a small set of people who find this incredibly impressive and very interesting and they really enjoy it, but they were going to vote for McCain anyway. And there’s probably a very small set of people who had their vote turned by something they saw on this blog,” Keliher said. “But in large part, it’s probably not going to have a very big impact. It strikes me as a website that was created in the era when it was simply cool to have a blog, and we are well past that phase.”

Read the full article here.